Letters To The Editor

March 24, 1996

SEATBELTS MAKE GOOD SENSE

Reference Paul A. Fleming's March 13 letter, "Too dependent on law," in which he has found the press' pursuit of primary enforcement of the seat belt law "almost bellicose." And why not? While Fleming draws comparisons to overeating and smoking, neither is a licensed activity. One does not need a license to drink, smoke, overeat, take drugs, swap needles, or engage in promiscuous sex. Three of the foregoing are legal, the latter three are illegal, for very good reasons, both medical and ethical.

Each automobile is equipped with brakes. The brakes, by law, must work, a very sensible precaution on any mass responding to Newton's law of inertia (one law Fleming may find irrevocable). The passenger in the cabin of an automobile is subject to the very same physical laws as the vehicle. Why then, in all common sense, should not the passenger have applied to him the same laws as the vehicle and be required to have brakes (a seat belt)?

Fleming can draw no parallel as to so-called "rights." His rights end where mine begin. If I have to pay an exorbitant sum in insurance over my driving years to subsidize his battle against sensible seat belt laws and their enforcement, I protest. I can find a better use for my money than to assist Fleming and Gov. Geroge Allen in death wishes.

It's just common sense. You wear your seatbelt, I'll wear mine and, God willing, we'll never have them save us from a terrible accident. It has been show over and over that a person remaining in the reinforced steel interior of a car stands a far greater chance of survival than one ejected onto the highway. Makes sense to me.

Bert Wisner

Williamsburg

CONCEALED AND SAFE

The March 18 editorial reflected more wishful nonsense on the part of the Editorial Board. The Daily Press suggests that a gun purchaser equipped with a license and a registered weapon would have somehow reduced the 367 handgun murders which occurred during 1994 in our beloved Virginia. How foolish.

The Daily Press desires that one must show need to possess and carry concealed weapons. The citizens of Virginia went through that already and numerous judges around the state promptly abused their new-found power by not issuing any concealed carry licenses at all. We learned our lesson.

The Daily Press wants the areas where concealed carry to be further restricted. As it is, I go through four (sometimes six) unlock/load/unload/lockup cycles daily in my travels to school, work, restaurants which serve alcohol (of which I have no interest), banks, etc. It costs miles and time, increases the potential for handling accidents and leaves my locked weapon unattended in places where a determined thief will certainly steal it.

Perhaps the Daily Press would agree with me if I said I would feel a lot better if my weapon stayed with me the entire day and remained safely holstered at all times. Is this not what the police do? Leaving my weapon outside of a strongbox and away from my person for a determined thug to steal only helps promote the stolen weapon on the street.

Why do I carry concealed? The six poor souls who have been murdered within one mile of my North End home in the last four years gives me a solid convincing feeling to that argument. The Daily Press is the grizzly public record of all these occurrences. The four thugs in a pickup truck who tried to run my mother off the road at 95 plus miles per hour and followed her home until I displayed a willingness to kill them at age 14 is another.

The possibility that my peers might be armed does not bother me and I very much welcome it. The fact that the thugs are predators and armed by default bothers me all the time.

The leftist views of the Daily Press Editorial Board endanger the safety all who proactively seek self-preservation.

James E. Byrd

Newport News

LICENSE EDITORS

Your gun control editorials are consistently written with a reckless disregard for the truth. Data in the 1994 FBI Uniform Crime Report clearly shows that crime and homicide rates are significantly higher in those jurisdictions with the most restrictive gun control regulations and lowest in those with the most relaxed gun control laws. But let's ignore any facts that refute our thesis that gun control can save lives; let's just promote our agenda based on what we believe to be true.

To paraphrase your March 18 editorial, here's my three-point plan to discourage further editorial recklessness: that henceforth all editorial writers should have a license and their word processors must be registered; that an editor seeking a permit for a word processor should have to show cause why he should be allowed to editorialize in a public forum; and that the places where a licensed editor can use his word processor be severely restricted.

If any editor was found to be misrepresenting the facts to further his own (or his employer's) misguided agenda, his license would be revoked and his word processor destroyed. Gradually the supply of editors and word processors would evolve into a group of people who know how to use words responsibly.

William F. Hines

Newport News

NAME CHANGE

Richard Stradling's March 13 article, "CEBAF requests new name" was very enlightening. In addition to begging the question of why the agency should be renamed, it points out the red tape which swamps Washington's bureaucracy.

If it takes the assistant for communications and the director of the Bureau of Energy Research a month to set up a meeting to decide whether or not to make a simple change of name, it's easy to see where federal income gets wasted. All this, and only a month away from the due date for income tax payments.